It is a case of finding a suitable niche application for RSX. For something like a flight simulator or imaging applications RSX would certainly be very useful - and these are important real world applications, but for most general purpose applications, RSX and it's 256MB DDR RAM would just sit idle. Another Cell and another 256MB XDR RAM would be preferable in most general purpose computing applications.
YDL v5.0 confirmed for PS3; arriving mid November
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It is a case of finding a suitable niche application for RSX. For something like a flight simulator or imaging applications RSX would certainly be very useful - and these are important real world applications, but for most general purpose applications, RSX and it's 256MB DDR RAM would just sit idle. Another Cell and another 256MB XDR RAM would be preferable in most general purpose computing applications.
I'm really thinking of a specific project here myself that I've been working on with the GPU. I think I could do the same processing on the GPU and CPU, with consistency between their results, so I'm thinking I could probably set up an SPU to talk to the GPU and keep it busy, and have the rest of Cell processing itself. It's easier to make full use of the system, I guess, if you have an application where the same processing can be done on both chips.
Well, the *new* fastest will have only 32,000 thousand though (half of which will be Cell!)
Are you refering to the Sony supercomputing cluster being cobbled together from the older dev kits, or just refering to some extra possible experimentation on the side? In the vein of the later, however, I wouldn't be surprised to see some enterprising university cobble a bunch of these together in the vein of Virginia Tech's G5 project a couple of years ago. Sure for floor-space and power draw it's definitely less than ideal, but for the cash-constrained, a $500 console beats an $18k blade any day of the week. Though... now that I really think about it, on retail PS3's I doubt you'd ever be able to get close enough to the hardware to make it happen, owing again to fact that the Linux will run layered.
Thanks for this reference to the contents of the Cell SDK 1.1 which is to be included in YDL 5.0. It's not entirely encouraging. I see compilers and a kernel for Cell for IBM hardware and x86 machines, but no actual PS3 software. If an updated kit for the PS3 is supplied, wouldn't they have changed the release number from 1.1?
--Greg
Well, the *new* fastest will have only 32,000 thousand though (half of which will be Cell!)
That hasn't been built yet - I am talking about the current fastest which is a quarter of the power of the 32000 Cell node machine. That supposedly has 130,000 opteron or power nodes. It was just quoted as a means of making a point. A Cell would of course be more compact and draw less power, but I didn't know the power consumption.
Mass production makes PS3 cheaper, and yes a PS3 is a possibility for cash strapped University, but it is only really an option for a small experimental cluster.
I think you have to find something RSX can do much better than Cell. If both RSX and Cell can do it, then people will pick an extra Cell every time for the greater flexibility it gives. Of course if you are stuck with PS3s - like PS3 users running SETI or molecule folding, then you would want to use both.
deathkiller
Newcomer
The linux IBM Cell software is the linux PS3 Cell software, there is no diference at binary level and I linked you to the providers of Cell SDK for Yellow Dog Linux distribution.
A FAQ on Terra Soft's site..not really much new, but clarifies some things perhaps:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/faq/ps3-general.shtml
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/faq/ps3-general.shtml
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You'd need a way of remote controlling these PS3s though - it's not fun running around pulling out the video, keyboard, mouse cords and plugging them into different machines. Once that problem is solved (and it's probably accomplished pretty easily, there are remote desktop type programs out there after all, and they should be able to run on PS3, at least after a recompile).
PS3 - despite being large for a console - is actually much smaller than most practically useful PCs. While you can't stack PS3s, they don't take up much space standing upright next to one another...
That 130,000 CPU supercomputer would be bluegene/L, right? Those CPUs are actually rather cool-running as they were designed for low power useage. There's probably not a single supercomputer CPU around anymore that draws upwards of 300W, at least not being actively developed. There could be installed legacy hardware here and there of course, to mention one of them, some of Cray's designs were incredibly power-thirsty. The T90 for example uses four tons (!) of fluorinert to cool the CPUs... I actually believe it used phase-change nozzles to hose down the chips, and then sucked away the coolant vapor to a heat exchanger to condense it back into fluid form. That's pretty badass radical stuff compared to what we use in our PCs. Anyway, that system was hot (literally) ten years ago, not so much today. Even the Earth Simulator custom CPUs 'only' draw like 150W AFAIR, and that's for the whole blade PCB and not just the CPU itself.
I don't think they'd use PS3s per se if that was the case, but rather more or less custom hardware without things like BR drives or GPUs.
My belief is they wouldn't actually do this however; the number of CPUs they'd need to serve many tens of millions of customers would be far beyond tremendous and would require monthly fees to finance the operation and weekly maintenance downtime like most MMOs today to keep things running even remotely smoothly. Imagine not being able to enjoy your game that day you arranged your schedule to get some free playtime without wife and kids hassling you because Sony's taken their serverfarms offline to give 'em the equivalent of a tune-up and an oil change? Many people would get quite irate. Heck, people get irate over WoW's weekly maintenance and they KNOW which day it takes place!
Bummer. It would have been much nicer if it the discs were included in the PS3 retail box!
The idea of using PS3s as a compute cluster is absurd. It won't scale. A properly rack-mounted system with no RSX, no BR-DOM, and nothing except ram and CELL (or multiple CELL) would be far better and cheaper per unit.
Anyone running a large Beowulf cluster is not going to go out and buy 500-1000 PS3. They're either going to go out and buy 500-1000 cheap commodity x86 boxes, or they're going to buy specially designed CELL systems for this task.
In fact, if I was building a compute cluster out of horizontally scaled boxes and no high speed network topology, I would not opt for CELL. By the time the possibility rolls around, you'll be able to buy quad-core CPUS or octo-core systems which have higher performance, lower cost, and lower power consumption than PS3s.
The PS3 is not a wonder device. It is a console.
Anyone running a large Beowulf cluster is not going to go out and buy 500-1000 PS3. They're either going to go out and buy 500-1000 cheap commodity x86 boxes, or they're going to buy specially designed CELL systems for this task.
In fact, if I was building a compute cluster out of horizontally scaled boxes and no high speed network topology, I would not opt for CELL. By the time the possibility rolls around, you'll be able to buy quad-core CPUS or octo-core systems which have higher performance, lower cost, and lower power consumption than PS3s.
The PS3 is not a wonder device. It is a console.
Cheaper in theory, but in practice many times more expensive; $19,000 (QS20) vs $1000 afterall (2 PS3s). Of course it's all relative...
But right there you see the novelty inherent in the idea of it. It's not a choice born out of pragmatism, to be sure, but I think the question of whether it is even possible or not is one... well, one I'd at least like to know the answer eventually. I know that some people have made clusters of XBox's before, and although I think the layering of the Linux OS in this instance will prove to be the torpedo that eventually sinks this idea, it's just interesting to think about.
E17 is an interesting choice. I knew raster about 10 years ago. I was one of the original irc ops in #e on efnet before it was moved to freenode and the #e / #gah split happened. This was when enlightenment first came out; before that it was fvwm-xpm.
Raster's a brilliant coder, but he has always had a habit of scraping his code base and restarting from scratch. He did this several times with enlightenment before E17, and from what I've heard, he's done it several times with E17 as well. He'll need to get past this if E is going to be the primary interface for the PS3.
It brings back some nostalgia for me though. I should check out #gah again. See if anyone I used to know is still around...
Nite_Hawk
Raster's a brilliant coder, but he has always had a habit of scraping his code base and restarting from scratch. He did this several times with enlightenment before E17, and from what I've heard, he's done it several times with E17 as well. He'll need to get past this if E is going to be the primary interface for the PS3.
It brings back some nostalgia for me though. I should check out #gah again. See if anyone I used to know is still around...
Nite_Hawk
DudeMiester
Regular
I have a bit of the same habit.
For me though, I've spent a lot of time designing a powerful extensibility model in C++ by taking generic programming as far I can imagine. This way, I'll never need to scrap my whole code base anymore; just the parts I don't like. Everything will still work (with minimal glue code), so I can propagate the changes throughout the system over time without breaking it. I'd like to take it farther, but that would necessitate scrapping C++ and writing my own languange, which I am not prepared to do... yet.
I'm talking about making best use of what we have, not what would be better if we could change the PS3
If you don't want the GPU to 'go to waste', so to speak, it doesn't necessarily need to be as good or better than Cell at your task to be productive. But it is nice if the type of processing you can do on both is symmetric (but of course, it's not necessary).Sure it'd be nicer, but it's not a big deal when you can just download it off a public server for free yourself.
Ars Technica has an article on this, by the way, talking with Terra Soft's head, and the guy behind Enlightenment. There's not much new in there, but the Terra Soft guy again seems to confirm optical disc drive access, and basically is at pains to reaffirm that this is full and optimal linux distro.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/linux/linux-20061018.ars
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optical disc drive access seemed a given to me. what would be more interesting to know is if linux would be able to access protected media. as far as we know linux could possible be unable to access DVD-Movies, let alone BD-Rom movies or PS3-Games.
In my book, that is called good coding practice! You need good foundations, and if the ones you don't have aren't sufficient, it's like building a wooden shack instead of a brick house because you happen to have lame foundations.
Better just rebuild the foundations so that you can get that brick house out there. Unless of course you're certain you'll only ever need a wooden shack, and/or you know beforehand that you can afford to rebuild the foundations *and* the whole house later on.
I'm assuming here that the decision for E17 was made at least a year ago, and that the relative silence last year was because he knew what he was working for and wanted to get it right and done sooner rather than later.
But that's speculation on my part.
No of course not. It means you can't develop games that can be run directly from the XMB. In other words, you can't develop any signed content that targets the PS3 outside of the Linux environment.
